#sorry this turned into a fucking essay but

[eddiegettingshot]

feel like this has always been pretty clear but buck's hamster wheel isn't about the specific relationships he's in or who they're with, it's about his shitty self-worth that stops him from interrogating his own wants and needs and largely makes him a passive participant in his own life. the pattern of his romantic relationships is the most obvious symptom of this because his desperate pursuit of love is rooted in said shitty self-worth. him discovering something new about his identity or breaking from that in minor ways does not begin to approach the wounds caused by his parents' emotional neglect nor does it change the resulting self-soothing behavior patterns that all of his romantic partners have reinforced thus far, which allow him to avoid recognizing his own agency.

the reason why eddie comes up is because he is actually pretty much the only person in buck's life thus far who has actively and consistently disrupted buck's complacency with taking the backseat in his own life. the way he treats buck allows him room to heal himself. historically this has been difficult for buck when he's in his various hamster-wheel relationships because said relationships are, as i said, the result of a much deeper issue with his perception of himself and so they allow him to stay in the same cycles (we all heard bobby call him out).

if buck were in a vulnerable/confused/uncertain position where he didn't understand what it was that he wanted, and eddie made a move on him, and that kickstarted their relationship, this would literally still be the same exact hamster wheel!!!!!! because he'd still be going in with the same issues that have caused rifts in all of his other relationships, and he wouldn't have made any strides in tackling said issues! if someone's saying otherwise, they're wrong!!!!!

but it would be not only shitty but completely out of character for about 20 different reasons for eddie to do this. it doesn't have to be eddie; it could absolutely be another character who also insists on trusting buck to make decisions for himself, they'd just have to introduce someone new. eddie just currently happens to be narratively positioned in a way that it makes sense for buck to be able to do the work on himself that would allow him to take the reins for the first time literally ever with him. getting off the hamster wheel is not about eddie or about any other character... it's about buck, developing such that he can make particular choices in his interactions with other characters that actually help him grow. that growth could happen through eddie or it could not. it doesn't matter, just like his actual romantic partner doesn't matter while he's still on the hamster wheel.

buck is not real and he has no interiority so it's actually ok to admit that certain narratives attached to certain characters might assist in or hinder his growth. it's also ok that buck's self-discovery and his relationship with a man instead of a woman affected very little change in this stuff that isn't necessarily about his sexuality. none of buck's problems take away from the fact that he's bisexual. and the fact that buck knows he's bisexual still doesn't necessarily heal the majority of his problems. if you want to believe that tommy has taken him off the wheel, that's fine! but there's no need to misrepresent or reduce what's being said on the other side.

[extravalgant]

i looove azteca from like. a narrative stand point

because we have this hero and thats you. were practically the stuff of legends by arc 2 just because of what kind of experience we have under our belt. we've never lost a fight, and it's assumed that we never will. that's how powerful the wizard is—everyone expects them to win, expects light to triumph shadow

and when we fail.... well. it shocks everyone doesnt it? people get angry. people get disappointed. to the wizard, who has never known failure or disappointment, it must feel like an entirely new thing. this culture was here for thousands and thousands of years—a culture and a people you never knew about until you were brought into the spiral.

and now because of you its gone. because you failed to save it and stop morganthe, its gone. and i think merle's passiveness about this situation hits a little differently this way—i read it more as disappointment, anyways. and to someone who has never known defeat, not to this capacity, with this many casualities and victims, the disappointment feels a little more crushing, doesn't it? the wizard is supposed to be a hero summoned from the legends, from a place not beyond a spiral where they had not heard of magic, and it feels like they let everyone down.

this imo is where morganthe truly establishes herself as a villain. i mean she already was a villain before imo BUT bringing a grieving man back from the dead to puppet around AND destroying a world is just straight up evil (and i love that). people like to complain about the malistaire bit which is valid in some cases but i think it really does sell the frivolity in which she chooses to go about things. like hey heres a man you killed with your own hands. probably when you were young. i brought him back from the dead to use as my pawn and now you have to fight him again btw. using a dead grieving man for my own goals. and then the fact that we cant beat him at the end, to 'send him back', is just another way she gets a leg up on us. she leaves us with unfinished business and xibalba destroying azteca is just icing on the already fucked up cake she's given us.

shes TAUNTING us. and this is important because it does come back to us in khrysalis—no doubt the wizard is still haunted by the sins of their past; their failure to save azteca. they have to get through this bit, to learn to let it go, before they can learn shadow magic. after all this, it's still stuck with us—our failure, one that she spearheaded.

dont even get me started on the wizard learning shadow magic maaaaaan because now they share one thing in common—they know shadow magic. they wield shadow magic. and shadow magic is so reviled that it's forbidden. no one else but her can really understand the isolation that comes with learning shadow magic, and it parallels the wizard and her even more because neither of them had a choice! the shadow magi turned morganthe into the shadow queen she is today, and we are subsequently forced to learn shadow magic and do the same if they ever have a chance at defeating her. i love it. i LOVE it. i love azteca... i love khrysalis....

[nicomoon69]

every time I’m forced to see this image bc I have to describe what’s wrong w it to dumb ass ppl a small part of me dies

cw: ugly ass emo whitewashed genshin man

[dickheadcanons]

Your brain is literally gynormous. Do you think Damian's and Dick's relationship is paternal? Because, as someone who has actually had to raise their sibling (do not recommend) it looks more like a guy that had too much in his plate trying to be the best caregiver he could, but not really being a parent, if that makes sense. I feel like the idea of him wanting to adopt him feels like kind of a retcon, couldn't really see it in the og run. But of course, it could be because it's not exactly the same as my experience (abusive father, incapable mother, yknow the drill). What do you think? All your posts are so good.

Also while you're at it, what do you think of Dick as a parent? Some elseworlds have played with the concept, and main continuity did something too with Olivia but T*m Tayl*r fucked that up too. I also wonder how Damian would be as a dad, but I don't think I've ever seen any stories with it.

omg anon thank you and thank you for asking!! this is literally one of my favorite topics!! i was thinking about making a post on this and now you gave me the excuse for it!!

Long story short, I don't think that “parental” is a binary thing. I mean, I know several bio-parents who are just guys with too much on their plates, trying to be the best they can, you know? And people can see parent figures in all kinds of relationships that aren’t blood or traditional moms/dads, especially with people who didn't know each other from birth. There are a million ways to be parented, and a million ways to act as a parent.

The way I think about it is, is Dick Damain's John Grayson? No, I don't think so.

But is Dick Damian's Bruce Wayne? Yes. Totally. Absolutely.

More under the cut bc I have a lot of thoughts.

I think to talk about Dick and Damian, we have to start with Dick and Bruce. So much about Dick and Damian is a reflection of the original Dynamic Duo, and I think that's very much the case with this element as well. From the start of their very long comic history, Dick and Bruce have been dancing around their relationship. We get early comics that say they're "like" father and son, we have Bruce saying he couldn't care about Dick more than if he was Bruce's son, but we also have places where they call each other their best friends, where they act more like brothers, etc etc.

When it comes to who our parents are, I think there is the responsibility, and the result. Certain people have the responsibility, the duty, to be our parents, and sometimes (because death or illness or being shitty people), they aren't able to meet those responsibilities. That never removes the responsibility; they don't stop being the parent. But they aren't able to create the result of us becoming good stable adults. That's where other people can step in, where the parental figure appears, and those are the people that we actually point to when we say "they made me the person I am today."

In fandom, we see a lot of Dick not wanting Bruce to replace his father, of him asking not to be adopted. I think this is a fine characterization that works with who Dick is, but Bruce is actually the one to say that he is not going to replace Dick's father. He says it completely unprompted, too. This is withholding the responsibility of being Dick's parent from Bruce, keeping him at a distance and reserving it as an honor for someone who can't hold it anymore, even as Bruce demands responsibility for literally everything else about Dick.

And I think that it's very telling of what Bruce's idea of a father is. The thing about having a dead parent at a young age is that the person of your parents is still tangled in the role of parent in your life; Mom is mom, not Martha, and because she's dead, the image of both Martha and "mom" is frozen. For Bruce, the relationship of father and son is frozen in the relationship of specifically his father and him. Of course Bruce is not Dick's father; Bruce himself is so different from what his conception of a father is. And as a fellow son, for Bruce, someone who just got back from 7 years abroad studying to be Batman, for whom the nearly 20 year old wound is still fresh, the idea of even wanting another father doesn't make sense, particularly for a boy that Bruce identifies with so hard that he becomes the third person ever to know who Batman is.

This looming memory is even worse when it's Dick's turn to be Batman. While Bruce looks at Dick and sees the memory of his own loss, the shadow of his own grief, Dick is looking at Damian and seeing Bruce. Dick knows very well who Damian lost; Dick is grieving what Damian lost more than Damian is. Bruce couldn't conceive of replacing a father, but Dick is struggling to imagining himself replacing Bruce at his job, much less who he was in his personal relationships.

But even if Damian isn't Dick's responsibility, Dick doesn't hesitate to care about Damian's future. "Who's going to save him if we don't?" At the start of the DickBats era, Dick isn't looking at Damian as a family member, really. He's looking at Damian as a victim, abet a very involved, very dangerous one. It's how Bruce looked at Dick too, before he had any reason to know that this kid would become something more to him. But, like Bruce, what Dick does to save Damian is bring him into the thing that is most precious to him; Batman. The mission. Saving people. A way to live in the world.

I know saying someone is the Batman to their Robin is like, a joke at this point. Something unbelievably cheesy. But you google "iconic duos" and Batman and Robin are one of the first responses. There's a reason for the joke. So imagine you are Robin, and your Batman is dead. And you have to go and find a new partner. Dick making Damian his Robin is heavy, just as heavy to me as adoption papers. Bruce made Dick his partner without any idea of what that meant. Dick, and the audience, had 70 years of expectation on what Dick and Damian could be. Dick making Damian Robin was a very specific claim, far stronger imo than just claiming him as a son would have been.

Because, to be honest (and speak to your other question), I don't think Dick thinks a lot about being a parent. I don't really think it's that important to him. Dick is a leader, a mentor, he deals with a ton of teenagers and kids through his vigilante work, he goes to Tim's sidekick parent's meetings and takes Jason skiing and more than that, he's also young. He's in his 20s. He should be at the club. I think he probably thinks he'll have kids in an abstract way, but it's not something he's looking for, consciously or unconsciously. He's not searching for connection, or to fix his mistakes or his past, the things that lead Bruce to adopting sidekicks. He'd be a great dad, and I think we see him being pretty good with his Elseworlds kids, but Dick is a very practical person, and him taking a kid in (vs finding somewhere else they can go) is not really the practical choice.

Except for one kid. There's just been one kid with legitimately no where else to go, where Dick is truly the only option, because going home meant only bad things for him. Dick made Damian part of his family in the ways that mattered to them both in that moment. With their lives, adoption doesn't really make a huge material difference on custody (if Damian wanted to leave, Dick couldn't have stopped him; Damian has access to basically unlimited money and can feed and clothe and wash himself. and possibly already has a phd.), and Dick wanted Damian to choose, anyway. If I recall correctly, Dick says he didn't think about taking Damian with him until Bruce comes back. He thought about taking Damian with him, thought that Damian might be better with Dick (his partner!!!!) than even with Bruce, his dad, the person Dick loves so much, only in the face of them being separated.

Meanwhile Damian, for all his blustering about how Dick needs to "earn" his respect, warms up to Dick startlingly quickly. For Damian, who had never known a father, who in his initial run hadn't even known his mother for more than two years, whose other male family is Ra’s al Ghul, his father is Batman. Even in Tomasi's kinder depiction of Damian's childhood, Damian only knows the Bat. And when he meets Bruce, the first thing he expresses is disappointment. Bruce the man is underwhelming and then goes and dies. So much for the mythic hero!

And then he meets Dick. Who manages to teach Damian something, who doesn't discount his skills even when he's wrong. Who proves that he is better at being Batman than Damian, and shows that he wants Damian around. And, even more importantly, who doesn't die. Dick is stable in a world constantly in flux. Damian screws up a lot in that run, and he leaves for long stretches of it, but Dick is always there when he gets back. There's no blame here, but the truth is that Dick is the one who stays.

Bruce was Damian's father, but what does that mean to someone whose never met a father at all? Bruce might have tried to connect with Damian before he died, but he doesn’t do it in a way that works. He doesn’t give Damian trust, he doesn’t encourage him in the ways Damian finds important…the first person to do that is Dick. Dick gives Damian responsibility, makes him part of the team. It could be argued that Damian didn’t deserve it, but we’re not talking about deserving. We’re talking about what worked. It sounds like as good an idea as making a tiny 8 year old acrobat a sidekick, but it undeniably worked for both Damian and Dick. Does that mean that either of these relationships were parental in the way that we think of it in the real world, in the way that a child psychologist would say is good and healthy? I have no idea. But they are the most parental in the absence of any other parents, and I think that means a lot.

Unfortunately, we don't get to actually see the dissolution of Dick and Damian's partnership. DC conveniently skips over showing us Bruce coming back and Dick becoming Nightwing again; preNew 52, Dick is still Batman with Damian even when Bruce returns, and in the New 52, he's been Batman "Before" and we don't really see the end, just a vague aftermath. But if it did take that kind of change to make them realize their relationship had a flavor of "parent and child", had the makings of something like a father and son, well, they'd just be following in the original Batman's footprints.

[sciderman]

How do you feel about the increase in really weird NSFW ads on here (advertising panels that look like sexual encounters, and AI art apps that pride themselves on porn) but will take down NSFW posts from their users, even if it isn't technically sexual.

i hate all social media and it's consistent prioritising the advertisers over the users and the internet simply was a better place before capitalism sunk its hooks into it

[archangeldyke-all]

wow, okay, transphobia isn't fucking welcome on this blog! and if you have a problem with that i'll block you, bitch!

[deadqueernoldor]

Thinking thoughts about those from Cuivienen and how they later treated the Valar, especially after Cuivienen was destroyed.

I imagine a foundation of sorrow and a layer of betrayal and pettiness. They had promised safety. And how did it turn out? Kin of Tata and Tatie their first leaders, slain in Valinor by the Dark Hunter from which the Valar promised protection in Valinor.

And then, the War of Wrath comes and with it the destruction of Cuivienen.

If any of those were re-embodied in Aman, I wonder if they make it a point to always turn their back to Valar and Maiar. I wonder if they only speak in the tongue they had first devised all those millennia ago and spoke in Cuivienen before time and different kindreds changed the tongue, not Sindarin or Quenya from the Great Journey's time or later. I wonder if they sing songs in their ancient tongue, songs about the beauty and unsullied health of Cuivienen every time any of the Ainur are near.

I wonder if the Valar feel any shame when those who they once looked upon in wonder and love gaze back at them with indifference or disgust.

[3416]

Leafs vs Rangers | 4.13.23

[name-doggo]

One thing I really wish the FF Community would Stop doing is Removing All Nuance from the Parents in Those Stories in order to Make Them Abusive Supervillains who Never Loved their Kid.

Like... In the Four Years I've been here, and for how Small the Community really is, you'd be surprised how many Times I've seen it-

[cowboyskeletons]

and sparrow's son loves the world so much and loves everyone around him and how can sparrow tell him that the world is cruel? how can he tell him that love will be punished and that cruelty is the only way to survive? normal's love scares him, he loves his son so much but that love scares him. he would do and has done anything for his son but he knows that it has led to his own ruin. and he loves his son but too much love has only ever harmed him and maybe he can take a model from his own dad and multitask.

maybe he can love his son but he hates him too, hates that normal can love and hates that normal can be loved and hates that normal can be so oblivious to the cruelty around him in a way that he himself lost when the world ended. he wants his son to have everything but loathes that fact that normal'll never try. that he just accepts life as it is. the way his dad did, when sparrow saluted henry and went along with the world's end and turned a blind eye to his wife's infidelity.

he sees himself in normal, maybe. maybe he hates that. because he lost himself, that day he lost his father's care and his mother's respect, and he can't bear to see himself lost again. normal needs to be cruel because otherwise he will be crushed and sparrow can't do that again. can't let himself be crushed again.

[monstersinthecosmos]

i feel like slightly younger than marius mael is the best just for flavor reasons lol. reeaally curious to know what you think

I think I usually land on slightly younger but not like a baby. Like early 30s maybe. BUT I'LL TELL YOU SOME THOUGHTS OF WHY I LIKE EACH OR WHY EACH COULD WORK:

Under 30: First of all because of Jesse's chapter in QOTD--Maharet was turned around age 20 I think? And for Jesse, I'm sure there's that sort of uncanny thing where your mind fills in blanks and makes excuses, like, her "aunt" has been around her whole life so like gee golly I guess she just looks young for her age! Except that there's like the vampire uncanniness too, so whatever you judge as an age doesn't super matter. So like, Mael blending in as one of her guy friends in his early 20s would make sense. Jesse DOES also clock him as not being human, so again I think the uncanniness might not make her peg either of them as a certain age.

I do worry if this clashes with the idea that he could properly be a priest? Caesar said that it takes 20 years to train a priest, but A) A lot of what Caesar said is like anti-Keltoi propaganda and might not be accurate since the Druids famously never left anything in writing, so there's very little first hand information about them. B) MAYBE IT'S OKAY BECUASE IN VC-VERSE TESKHAMEN IS REAL AND MAEL WAS REALLY COMMUNING WITH HIM SO IF THERE WAS LIKE MAGIC AFOOT IN THE COMMUNITY MAYBE HE GOT FAST TRACKED OR RESPECTED AS BEING SPECIAL IDK. I can work with it and make excuses lol.

I LOVE the idea of him being like a young man because of how much madder that would make Marius, plus the way he likes to mentor young blonde men lol. But it might like hurt him even worse if the author of all his misfortunate is like SOME KID.

In his 30s: Personally I usually land here because I DO wonder how long it takes him to gain status in his community and become a priest (in his 30s is still fast tracking it but maybe feels more plausible LOL) and I enjoy the idea of he and Marius being sort of similar to each other. Like, Marius often gets used as the example of Turning an Older Guy and what it means for his temperament and the way it translates to his immortality. I like imagining Mael as around Marius's age for that reason, like I want to remove all his excuses why Mael is a young stupid kid or even an old salty jerk--it forces Marius to confront that Mael is ALSO someone who is chill and smart and has had enough life experience. BUT WHILE THERE'S A WINDOW WHERE THEY COULD BE SIMILAR IN AGE, OR MAEL COULD BE A TAD OLDER, I ALSO STILL ENJOY MARIUS BEING LIKE "HE'S YOUNGER THAN ME I HATE THIS!" BECAUSE HIS AGE AND SELF-PERCEIVED WISDOM & EXPERIENCE ARE IMPORTANT TO HIS IDENTITY AND HE FEELS BELITTED LOL.

In his 40s: Makes sense for the above reason! But I like to skew younger personally just for the Marius ageism dynamic lol. Also there's something about him being a foil to Marius where like, if they're very similar in other ways it can kind of emphasize how their atheism/religion contrasts each other and affects them as people.

Over 50: ALSO POSSIBLE and it's hilarious bc in the audiobook the narrator reads him like such a grouchy old man lmao. I could see this causing a lot of resentment because Marius likes to be the oldest and wisest in the room. I could see him also being younger because Marius insults him every chance he gets and I just think he would've told us that Mael is like an old hag if it were true lol. Anyway wondering how this effects Marius's barbarian kink and how he submits to men.

[stopthatfool]

in top gun meta hell rn. what the fuck am i doing in top gun meta hell. i don't think i'm supposed to be thinking so hard about this movie. it's not designed for this.

[murdleandmarot]

@toki-toro A Skimble for you, and @mysticalcats a Foxglove for you :D

[themyscirah]

But look at us Luke, we're the ones left alone, holding some rich monster's pain. All of existence, built on his violence. All of space-time, humming to life with a single inviolate rule. Give the hero something to punch.

[sunspinecity]

50$ to print 10 of the same skin has always been so insane to me. you're telling me it's 50$ to print....only 10.....of a single skin....and that's normal. And not only is that normal, that's what's required for a skin shop. where ppl may not even sign up for 10 runs. and then you're left in the shitter with at minimum 1-4 skins nobody wanted (not to mention if some people decide not to pay afterward) that you have to just pray someone finds & buys on the auction house. And it's 50$. Uhuh. And then that's just the artist's issue and fault and we're gonna blame them instead of the fact that a 10 print run costs as much as groceries.

[solipseismic]

really fucking stupid wha tkind of injuries (""""injuries""") will make ur joints suddenly have the integrity of a 269 yr old man who used to pogo stick 30 hours a day to make a living